Early years funding

Investing in the most vulnerable young Britons will benefit everyone.

SIR – We have written to George Osborne, the Chancellor, to propose that, in the forthcoming Budget, he extends the pupil premium to help disadvantaged children under five develop their skills.

There is currently funding to help disadvantaged primary and secondary school pupils narrow the attainment gap between themselves and their peers. There is no such help available for children throughout their early years education. This means that disadvantaged children begin school lagging behind others. Extending this premium would help prepare children for school and increase social mobility. It would provide opportunities to increase support for young children being looked after in children’s centres, nurseries and with childminders, with particular focus on vulnerable children.

We urge the Chancellor to consider its inclusion in the 2014 Budget. Many within the Government, including Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, are already publicly backing its inclusion.

SIR – Michael Staples askswhy there is not a system in place whereby data are streamed from an airline’s black box to a ground station. Such a system does exist. It is called Acars: Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System. This is a digital datalink system for transmission of short, simple messages between aircraft and ground stations via radio or satellite. It provided a lot of data about the Air France crash in the Atlantic Ocean in June 2009.

The system would only stop operating if there was a complete electrical failure, or the aeroplane blew up.

Cedric Flood Upton, Wirral

Totting up tots

SIR – One reasonhalf of adults cannot do simple sumsis the use of electronic devices for adding up. When I was a student working in a pub, I had to add up non-decimal sums in my head, while carrying out a conversation with the customer, and pouring the pint. Now, bar staff can’t tell you the price of a round without recourse to the electronic till.

Diggory Seacome Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

Milky way

SIR –Charles Janz’s letterabout the problems of using correct Italian when ordering a panino reminded me of a party of English schoolchildren, on a trip to Italy, ordering eight lattes; they were astonished to be presented with eight glasses of milk.

Clare Johnson Glossop, Derbyshire

SIR – Has Charles Janz considered that Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, might be more concerned about improving English grammar rather than Italian? Ron Mason East Grinstead, West Sussex

SIR – Telling restaurateurs H W Fowler’s statement: “that Welsh Rabbit is amusing and right; and Welsh Rarebit stupid and wrong” does not result in the better seats, larger portions or ad lib wine that one would think was the appropriate response to such generosity with one’s knowledge.

The connectivity problems in our rural areas are well known. But here in the City, our 13,000 small and medium enterprises and 8,000 residents have similar problems, despite high-speed fibre optic cables under our streets serving the large companies based here. Astonishingly, none of the main providers has any plans to address this.

If we are unable to roll out high-speed broadband in the City of London quickly, the chances of this happening in the rest of the country by 2017 are bleak.

Graham Packham Common Councilman, City of London London EC2

EU referendum fudge

SIR – The Labour Party’s proposalconcerning a possible referendum on European Union membership is based on the unlikely event of further powers being ceded to Brussels.

However, what the majority of politicians refuse to recognise is that the British people resent what has already been yielded to Brussels. To recover our right to rule ourselves requires that we leave the EU. This proposal is yet another fudge by those desperate to remain within it.

Colin Bullen Tonbridge, Kent

Bob Crow’s example

SIR – If this nation had a prime minister half as committed to its people as Bob Crow, the leader of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, was to the interests of his members, we would all be in a better place. Although I disagreed with his politics, even his critics would have to concede that Mr Crow represented his colleagues quite brilliantly.

P A Feltham Epsom, Surrey

Miranda's moment

SIR – Anyone who thinks that Miranda Hart is only a charming buffoon is wrong.

Tony was my tutor at Oxford from 1946 to 1948, and we became good friends. He was charming and very good company, but I did not have the slightest idea that he was homosexual – he certainly was not “openly” so in those years; he had a girlfriend called Hilary Sarson. She found him difficult and asked me once to have coffee with her in the Cadena. She wanted advice on how to handle Tony. I told her, bluntly, to drop him. He was always going to put himself first and she would have a terrible time if she married him. Not surprisingly, perhaps, she ignored my advice and married him. She was unhappy and they divorced after a very few years.

Tony tried to get me interested in politics, indeed he strongly urged me to join the Labour Party. F A Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom had already made a great impression on me and turned me against socialism. But Tony insisted that the Labour Party was not going to be like that. He foresaw a kind of “socialism with a human face”; had he been alive 10 years or so ago, he would surely have been all for the Third Way. He tried to persuade me to go to see his friend Roy Jenkins and talk things over. But I knew it just wasn’t me.

Looking back, it seems a pity that I did not at least go to see Jenkins. But he had already gone down, and it would have meant a visit to London. And I could not bring myself to join the Conservatives, associating them with Hooray Henrys; another missed opportunity as I would have met Margaret Thatcher, whom I admired so much later on.